Walk east from Kings Road on Santa Monica Boulevard and the block between Olive Drive and La Cienega feels different than it did a year ago. The corner that used to be a vacant mid-century showroom next to Barney's Beanery is now the busiest daytime address in the neighborhood. A grocery aisle at 8 a.m. has become the new coffee line. Residents who once drove to Erewhon are walking two blocks instead.
The shift is not a coincidence of openings. It is a corridor reorganizing itself around daytime use, on a stretch of boulevard that most guidebooks still catalog as nightlife.
The Building Was Almost A Teardown
The address is 8445 Santa Monica Boulevard, and the building has more history than the block gives it credit for. Not long after he returned from World War II, Herb Ritts commissioned architect Harry Harrison to create a glamorous new showroom to sell his line of rattan furniture. The Ritts Co. was wildly successful as Ritts convinced the parents of the Baby Boom generation to fill their new homes with lightweight, inexpensive exotic "Tropitan" furniture. The son who grew up in that family, also named Herb Ritts, went on to photograph most of the recognizable faces of the 1980s and 1990s.
Originally built in 1942 for Ritts Company Furniture, the building later housed the dot com-era Hollywood Stock Exchange and more recently served as creative office space for companies like Stampede Ventures. By the late 2010s it was mostly forgotten. The official city of West Hollywood historic survey ranked it a 6Z, the lowest status possible. Neighbors on the WEHO Times comment threads have noted, correctly, that the building and Barney's Beanery next door were nearly demolished.
Dean McKillen and Phil Howard, the operators behind Laurel Hardware at 7984 Santa Monica and Ysabel a few blocks south, took control of the site and spent years on it. The result opened on May 8, 2026 as Laurel Supply, and the restoration is the kind of adaptive reuse the corridor has not seen at this scale before. The soaring Douglas fir timber trusses, the warm blonde oak millwork, the floating ceiling canopy over the central bar, the cedar facade with floor-to-ceiling glass looking out onto Santa Monica Boulevard read as a single continuous room, not a retail box.
What Actually Sits On The Shelves
Laurel Supply is technically a grocery store. It behaves like a market hall. The new market leans heavily into an organic and European-inspired shopping experience. The produce section is stocked entirely with organic fruits and vegetables, followed by a smoothie, juice, coffee and matcha bar with indoor seating. Other offerings include an organic butcher, sushi counter, gelato selection and a health and beauty section featuring imported products from around the world.
The detail that separates it from the competition sits behind the counter:
Among the features Howard said he is most excited about is the store's in-house flour mill, which will be used to produce flour for fresh pasta and pizza. "One of the main things that we're most excited about is we brought in a flour mill," he said. "We mill our own flour for all our pizza and pasta."
Prices land where you would expect for the block. Expect $22 cedar deodorant, egg salad for $23 per pound, and $13 Golden Goji Granola. The nearest Erewhon is a six-minute walk away, and early crowds suggest there will be no imminent showdown between the two — somehow, there seems to be room on this strip for both.
A few practical notes for anyone who lives within walking distance:
- Hours are 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily, per the store's own listing at laurelsupply.com.
- Ample parking is available in the lot behind the building, though the lot is small enough that residents on Olive Drive have already noticed spillover onto the street.
- The outdoor patio may be the best people-watching seat in West Hollywood. Warm oak benches and tables stretch along the Santa Monica Boulevard frontage under oversized cream umbrellas, framed by young olive trees. The views down the boulevard are wide open. Gas fire features are already in place for cooler days and evenings.
The patio matters more than it sounds. Santa Monica Boulevard between La Cienega and Fairfax has almost no public seating oriented toward the street. The Laurel Supply frontage is the first extended stretch of open-air café seating on this section of the corridor.
The Coffee Question Moved West
The other quiet story of 2026 in West Hollywood is that the good daytime coffee stopped clustering on Melrose. Two openings on and near Sunset shifted the map.
Kith's West Hollywood flagship added a daytime café called Ronnie's Pronto, an order-at-the-counter operation with a second location in London. You can eat a caprese sandwich after copping a suede hoodie. This order-at-the-counter spot has NYC-coded BECs on kaiser rolls, panzanella salads, and a grilled cheese made with Japanese milk bread waffles. Ronnie's also serves espresso drinks and their signature Pronto Freezes: slushy drinks that come in matcha and coffee flavors.
Further west on the Strip, Handles Coffee has just opened as a specialty coffee shop offering a range of high-quality coffee drinks, including popular matcha options. Located in the Sunset Strip area, Handles Coffee has quickly become known for its inviting atmosphere. Whether you're craving a cup of espresso or a refreshing matcha, Handles Coffee is a perfect pit stop for caffeine lovers.
Both are counter-service operations that lean toward the pre-noon commuter and the post-workout regular, not the tourist who wants a rooftop cocktail. That matters for how the neighborhood reads on a Tuesday morning versus a Saturday night.
Free Programming You Can Walk To Between Now And Labor Day
If the private sector is reorganizing the daytime, the city is reorganizing the evening. West Hollywood Park has been running the Summer Sounds concert series, a free program that continues through the end of August. Eventbrite listings for the season show upcoming Summer Sounds nights with Tamara Jade and Orlando Dixon among the confirmed acts. Registration is free, and the park is a walkable distance from any address between Fairfax and Doheny.
That programming sits inside a wider free-concert pattern the city keeps returning to. Smaller rooms such as Live at The Sun Rose and The Peppermint Club spotlight rising artists in a more intimate setting. Free, seasonal concerts round out the calendar, like the city's popular Summer Sounds and Winter Sounds series.
For residents planning around the balance of the year, two dates are worth writing down. WeHo Pride returns in June 2027 with the same month-long structure the city has used since taking the celebration in-house, and the world-famous West Hollywood Halloween Carnaval transforms Santa Monica Boulevard into one of the country's largest and most extravagant Halloween street parties. If you live on the Carnaval route, October 31 is the night you plan to walk, not drive.
What The Block Reorganizes For Residents
The pattern in the openings above is worth stating plainly. West Hollywood's identity has, for years, been built around evening use. The Roxy, the Troubadour, the Whisky, the Comedy Store, the rooftops on La Cienega. Guides to the neighborhood still lead with those addresses. The 2026 openings that residents actually walk to, however, are structured around morning and midday.
A luxury grocery with a 7 a.m. open. A café inside a fashion store. A specialty coffee bar on the Strip. A patio designed for daylight. This is not a dining wave in the Canon Drive sense. It is a daytime-anchor wave, and its center of gravity is a single block on Santa Monica Boulevard between Olive Drive and La Cienega.
For homeowners on the streets that feed that block, that shift changes what the corridor is worth on foot. Havenhurst, Norton, Sweetzer, and the small residential grid between Fountain and Santa Monica have always been quiet at 9 a.m. They are less quiet now. The nearest grocery is no longer a driving destination. The nearest coffee is no longer on Melrose. The nearest patio with fire pits is a five-minute walk.
That is a real change in daily use, and it is the kind of change that happens before it shows up in any market summary. The residents who noticed first are the ones who already live within earshot of it.
If you own a home in West Hollywood and want a considered read on how these shifts intersect with value in your specific pocket of the neighborhood, Nichole Shanfeld works quietly with residents on that question. Request Private Access to start the conversation.
